Day: April 26, 2002

Categories
8th Doctor

Embrace The Darkness

Embrace The DarknessA science station on the distant world of Cimmeria IV is plunged into darkness. Its three-person crew can’t see, but they can feel – and what they feel, at the hands of whatever has attacked the station, is intense pain. The Doctor arrives by chance, having always wondered how the sun of the Cimmerian system went dark at some point in the future, but when he and Charley pay a visit, things go horribly wrong, including Charley encountering the science station’s crew…who have been relieved of their eyes. The same fate then befalls Charley when she’s separated from the Doctor – and the Time Lord is getting no help from ROSM, an artificial intelligence whose inflexible thinking may not only doom an entire species inhabiting Cimmeria IV, but may also force the time travelers to be present for the death of the sun.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsJim Mortimore

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Nicola Boyce (Orllensa), Lee Moone (Ferras), Mark McDonnell (Haliard), Ian Brooker (ROSM / Solarian / Cimmerian), Nicholas Briggs (Cimmerian Voice)

Timeline: after Seasons Of Fear and before The Time Of The Daleks

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

Catch-1782

Doctor Who: Catch-1782The Doctor and Melanie arrive at the National Foundation for Scientific Research just prior to a public ceremony marking the Foundation’s 100th anniversary. Mel’s eccentric uncle, John Hallam, is not just a member of the Foundation but actually lives on the grounds. During the ceremony, involving the burial of a time capsule, it is discovered that something else has already been buried there. When the Doctor and Hallam examine the object, it causes an explosion in another one of the Foundation’s laboratories – one where a rather bored Melanie is reading through Hallam’s records of their family history. Melanie is missing when the Doctor and Hallam try to come to her aid, and the Doctor strongly suspects that the mysterious object has catapulted her back in time. He also thinks that her time journey may have been directed by her thoughts at the time, so the TARDIS homes in on the sprawling Hallam estate in 1782. That leaves only a few rather significant problems: in Melanie’s timeline, six months have passed since her arrival, and in that time, she has been heavily drugged by a family doctor who feels that her ramblings about being from the future are a sign of dementia. Worse yet, with no sign of rescue from that future, Mel has started to believe that she is who her ancestor, Henry Hallam, tells her she is: his future wife, and therefore her own ancestor.

Order this CDwritten by Alison Lawson
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), Derek Benfield (John Hallam), Keith Drinkel (Henry Hallam), Jillie Meers (Mrs. McGregor), Michael Chance (Dr. Wallace), Ian Fairbairn (Professor David Munro), Rhiannon Meades (Rachel)

Timeline: after The Juggernauts and before Time And The Rani

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Invasion

The Son Also Rises

InvasionWhen Larkin finds Jesse at home, drunk, and practicing his aim with the gun that Tom gave him, Russell confronts his son first, and then confiscates the gun and goes to confront Tom about it. He also gives Tom the evidence he has uncovered, that Szura is part of the military’s plans for the hybrids. Worried that the future of the hybrids is falling out of his control, Tom and his most trusted deputy, Sirk, go to check in on Szura’s island operation, but they find the island deserted. Larkin and Dave try to find out more about Szura’s master plan from the documents Dave retrieved, but they also find that another hurricane is forming in the Atlantic – one that could be on a direct path for Homestead, and one that could cover Szura and his followers if they make a more overt grab for power. A group of boys from Jesse’s school invite him to join them as they band together to fight for non-hybrids – but when he discovers that their first sacrifice is Deputy Sirk, Jesse finds himself fighting his own kind.

Order this DVDwritten by Juan Carlos Coto & Michael Foley
directed by Sergio Mimica Gezzan
music by Jon Ehrlich and Jason Verlatka

Guest Cast: Nathan Baesel (Sirk), James Frain (Eli Szura), Tina Holmes (Ms. Wade), Joshua Gomez (Scott), Mark Colson (Deputy Munger), Julio Oscar Mechoso (Frank Vargas), Holmes Osborne (Mayor Littles), Kimleigh Smith (Nurse #1), Eddie Rutkowski (Nurse #2), Veronica Cartwright (Valerie Shenkman), Tripp Pickel (Deputy Smith), Richard Lucas (TV Director), Carlos McCullers II (Jake), Stephen Alvarez (Paul Hambrick)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 04

The Sontaran Stratagem

Doctor WhoA call from Martha brings the TARDIS back to Earth, just in time for Donna and the Doctor to witness a UNIT raid on the Atmos factory. Standard-issue in more than half the automobiles in the world, Atmos cancels out all harmful pollution emissions from any car – and the Doctor recognizes it as something far ahead of current human technology. But as everyone knows, Atmos is the invention of former teen prodigy Luke Rattigan, who now heads his own academy for developing young genius. A visit to Rattigan’s academy reveals that he is in league with a Sontaran invasion force, a discovery from which the Doctor barely escapes alive. He decides to dissect an Atmos device for himself, only to accidentally trigger a weapon within it that emits toxic gas. Using a clone of Martha to keep UNIT’s attention away from the real danger, the Sontarans activate all of the gas emitters in all of the Atmos-equipped cars worldwide…

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Helen Raynor
directed by Douglas MacKinnon
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Freema Agyeman (Dr. Martha Jones), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Ryan Simpson (Luke Rattigan), Rupert Holliday Evans (Colonel Mace), Christopher Ryan (General Staal), Dan Starkey (Commander Skorr), Eleanor Matsuura (Jo Nakashima), Clive Standen (Private Harris), Wesley Theobald (Private Gray), Christian Cooke (Ross Jenkins), Rad Kaim (Worker), Elizabeth Ryder (Atmos voice)

Notes: The Sontarans last appeared with The Two Doctors (namely Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton) in 1985, though fanmade productions such as Mindgame and Shakedown revisited them after the cancellation of classic Doctor Who. This is the first episode to give, in dialogue, the revised name for UNIT – the Unified Intelligence Taskforce – which was changed from the original name, United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, for completely non-fictional legal reasons. Despite the change, dialogue elsewhere in the episode still says that UNIT gets its funding from the United Nations. Speaking of UNIT, a bit of fun is poked at the long-standing debate over whether the third Doctor‘s stint with UNIT took place in the 1970s or 1980s – and the issue certainly isn’t resolved. The Sontarans are apparently aware of the Time War, but for whatever reason were “not allowed to take part in it.” The reference to the human female’s “weak thorax” is a riff on the 1975 story The Sontaran Experiment, in which Field Major Styre noted differences in the thorax between the human genders.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Skull Of Sobek

Doctor Who: The Skull Of SobekOn the very blue planet Indigo 3, the Doctor and Lucie find a monastery in the midst of the planetary desert – and they find themselves beseiged within its wills when someone starts shooting at them. The monks and nuns there, however, are too busy trying to cover up a grisly murder – possibly more than one – to really extend any hospitality to the time travelers. When reptilian warriors begin to manifest themselves in the lower levels of the monastery, the Doctor deduces that they are the killers – and that they’re just warming up to doing something really nasty. It turns out that the warriors represent two factions who have been at each other’s throats for hundreds of years, dating back to the beginnings of their hostilities on the feudal planet Sobek. One of the alien combatants decides that the Doctor will be his chosen champion, whether he wants to be or not. The other picks an even more unlikely champion – Lucie – and pits the two against each other in a ritual fight to the death.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Art Malik (Abbot Absolute), Barbara Flynn (Sister Chalice), Giles Watling (The Old Prince); Sean Biggerstaff (Snabb), Mikey O’Connor (Dannahill), Katarina Olsson (Sister Thrift)

Timeline: after Brave New Town and before Grand Theft Cosmos

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green